Gen
The sun only set a few hours ago but I would have no problem slipping beneath my sheets, turning on mindless reality television, and drifting to sleep. It’s not just the bone tiredness I always feel after being in the studio after a break—though the fatigue setting into my muscles is definitely a huge part. It’s thatthis—watching more than half of the Astor Hill College Athletics Program mingle around a fire when it’s still warm enough to wear shorts—is boring. Maybe I’d be having more fun if Jean was here already, or if Will wasn’t being commandeered by my least favorite person—his girlfriend. But here I am, sitting on a log.
People watching.
“But you can at least admit Hairspray is catchy, right?” Andy asks, his usually careless demeanor intensified by the number of cups he’s littered the ground with. Everyone laughs, including Grant Fielder, whose looming presence gains my notice when I see the corners of his eyes crease in amusement.
“Is that the one with the witch?” one of theirteammates Scott asks. “Or the hot lawyer?” His either feigned or very real ignorance is funny, apparently, the growing cluster of people giggling at his idiotic question. Everyone, but Grant.
I purse my lips as I steal a glance at him, finding the grim line of his mouth refreshing among the over-exaggerated laughs chirping around us.At least someone else here has a sense of humor, I think to myself as I fix my gaze back in Will’s direction. His hand is stuffed in the back pocket of Olivia’s skirt, his mouth whispering something in her ear as she flirtatiously glares at him, and I can’thelpbut roll my eyes for the millionth time tonight.
I need to get out of here.
Just as that thought crosses my mind, I feel someone’s eyes on me.
Grant. This all knowing smirk gracing his face, like he can read my mind. His attention makes something flare inside me, the way it has since the day I met him my freshman year.
I cock my head back at him, letting him know I’ve noticed. I want him to sheepishly back off, but instead he just lets his gaze flit across my body and I feel myself flush. Someone calls his name pulling his attention away and for whatever reason I feeldisappointed? I shake it off.
Grant Fielder is a beautiful specimen, but the man acts like he walks on water. I think everyone else finds it endearing—the way he’s so patient, so thoughtful, sogood. But I don’t buy it. I see those moments when that mask slips, catch the subtle roll of his eyes at something his teammates say, notice the way he clenches his fists when Will approaches him.
“Oh, I’ll play,” I hear Andy say as I follow where Grant’s attention is now firmly placed.
“Play what?”
“Never Have I Ever,” Will says, wiggling his brows at me. Olivia gets this far away look in her eyes but quickly masks it, taking a deep breath before settling onto a log with Will.
“Like, the one we all played at sixteen so we could ask each other vulnerable shit without seeming nosy?” Images of Will and I at fourteen float through my mind, my hand wrapped around his arm as we waded into a circle on someone’s basement floor, and my heart aches. Masking the pang of nostalgia, I crinkle my nose.
“Yes,” Andy, the comical, charming, point guard who spends his spare time in the theater department, says with a cheesy smile on his face. “Glad to see you used to be a good time, Gen.” His wink is quick and subtle,almostmaking me laugh. His cocky grin spreads wide, highlighting the handsome angles of his still tanned face. He has that permanent bronze you see on people from the West Coast, the one that makes men appear far more attractive than they would be otherwise. I’ve heard the rumors, and all I can assume is that the women who fall for his surfer boy, California charm, don’t mind the class clown act.
I look around the lot, checking for Jean, annoyed I let him go home at all after dance instead of just coming straight here. I begrudgingly settle across from Will, deciding it’ll take minimal effort to just play along. And it does, for the most part. Raising your hand a few times, laughing when appropriate—they’re all great distractions from the way Will is peppering Olivia’s neck with kisses between turns.
“Never have I ever…” Olivia drags out the phrase, “gotten a speeding ticket!”
Her small victorious smile reminds me just how bizarre it is that her and Will are still together.Of course she doesn’tspeed, I think to myself, taking in the barely indecent length of her skirt, the crispness of her white sneakers, the perfect placement of her L initial necklace. And then I feel bad.Ugh.
I put a finger down, along with most everyone else in the crowd, and take the smallest sip of my drink I can manage.
“Okay, your turn,” she says, nudging my best friend in the rib. Will sits up a little straighter, looks at me like he also remembers that one time he got a ticket when we took his dad’s 57’ GT Spyder for a joyride, then gazes into the fire as he thinks of a prompt.
“Never have I ever used a fake ID.” I keep a finger up, knowing that neither Will or I thought the trouble would be worth our respective athletic careers.
Andy launches into the time he and his friends got chased out of a convenience store in San Bernardino, and Olivia gets a sad, far off look on her face.Fuck. I know she’s thinking about her best friend Lily, because I specifically remember her padding into a gas station barefoot, with a straight face, buying her and I a bottle of bitter red wine. We took turns sipping from it as she told me all about the girl shedidn’twant us to meet.
“Your go, Grant,” Andy nods his head toward him, and I watch as Astor’s star center racks his mind for a good enough question.
With a sigh, like it was really so difficult, he says, “Never have I ever…” he hesitates, shrugging, “been to a nude beach.”
I’m not at all shocked when Andy drops a finger and takes a long drip from his cup, but Iamsurprised to see Will and Olivia drop fingers in unison, the slightest blush creeping across the bridge of her barely freckled nose.
Jealousy warms the back of my neck, confusion twining itself around my understanding of them. Because theydon’twork—they never have. She is uptight and straight-laced, single minded and cold, while Will, for the almost decade I’ve known him, is anything but. He’s spontaneous and temperamental, careless but beneath it all, warm and kind hearted. I can’t imagine her agreeing to go to anudebeach. It eats at me, the way it always does when I realize there are things I don’t know about him, because of her.
“Okay, okay—I have a good one.” Scott’s eyes gleam, clearly still into this game.
“This should be good,” Will laughs, taking another sip.
“Never have I ever…” Scott looks around the circle of participants, which is noticeably smaller than it was when we started twenty minutes ago. “Never have I ever… fucked a virgin.”
